Magus ex Machina [Cyberpunk-Fantasy LitRPG] (Book 1 complete!)

Once they were all safely situated back inside the car, Phanya planted her fists on her hips and tried to channel her inner disappointed teacher figure. "So, Tapper, what happened? Because I know this is all your doing, somehow."

Ricky crossed his arms right back at her. She had been practicing that routine on him since they were kids, and Ricky was mostly immune by this point. "Hey now, that's not fair. Tapper got botnapped and I rescued him, because I remembered seeing the hovercar up for repairs in the mechanic section. We chased them off, but security thinks we caused a bunch of damage."

"Indeed, we were left holding the proverbial tab," Tapper corroborated. "Otherwise, I spent all afternoon working under the tutelage of a Miss Tress."

Phanya blinked and replayed that last sentence in her mind. "...Who?"

Ricky giggled, and a grin spread across his face full of youthful vigor. "He was working at a brothel! It was awesome."

"I learned how to make drugs for a quest!"

Phanya pinched the bridge of her nose, praying that she could will away this headache before the system recognized it as a debuff. "I don't even know where I'm going to start with you two."

Salazar cleared his throat with impolite gusto and said, "Not to interrupt whatever this thing is, but Privateer security is still going to catch us if we don't get moving." He waved one hand vaguely over the trio before hooking his thumb over his shoulder, indicating somewhere outside the rear of the vehicle. Through a nearby window everyone could still see the platform in the distance, its spotlights flickering as it struggled to stand on crabby legs. "And we can't do that before we actually set up the tow cables."

"Right, fine, good point. We'll deal with this later," Phanya said, in the hopes that no one would actually ever bring up brothels ever again. "How do we tie off the cables?"

"Oh! Oh! I can fix that with my gizmo!" Ricky suddenly announced. He struggled to slip out of his exosuit and proudly held up his device from before, and now without the excitement of the chase Tapper could take a good look at it. The only recognizable component was the stock and trigger from Ricky's destroyed air rifle, which vanished into a mess of metal gears. They formed no pattern that the others could discern, and any attempt to follow the teeth folding in on each other made their eyes swim out of focus. Somehow, Ricky had managed to cram the gears into a space that was physically too small to hold them all.

"The secret ingredient is the gremlin's rib, which is perfectly elastic to use as a mainspring. Just gotta twist the turnkey to wind the mainspring and…" Ricky pointed out the components as he talked, a flat round handle on the side that inserted into a thin metal strip that looped around itself over and over. He twisted the metal handle and the looping strip shrank slightly, coiling in onto itself by a marginal degree.

The ratcheting turnkey clicked, and something imperceptible changed. Ricky squinted at the gizmo with a thoughtful frown and mumbled, "No wait, that's not quite right." He tugged at some gears, pushed at some others, and although nothing visibly changed Ricky gave the turnkey a few more twists. He could feel the mounting tension, but Ricky wasn't sure if it was from everyone watching him or from his own invention. Did Tapper feel this every time he used magic?

"What in the hell is this kid doing —" Salazar started, but Tapper cut him off.

"Shh, I believe we are about to witness something wondrous," Tapper hushed. Phanya didn't say anything, but she watched Salazar's shocked expression with a satisfied grin. Poor guy still couldn't handle a robot talking back to him.

Ricky didn't notice the exchange, he was too laser focused on his work. The gears were leaking too much mana, he could tell that it would only create a temporary energy structure like last time. It was so close to working! The mainspring finally reached max tension right as the mana channels broke through that threshold, and Ricky breathed out some of his own tension. Ricky shifted so he faced the wall, right where the two severed vehicles met, and pulled the trigger.

Tiktiktiktiktik

Everyone reeled back, paused, and slowly relaxed, individually feeling very foolish. With Ricky's buildup they expected something a bit more impressive than the soft ticking noise from the gizmo, but Ricky still stood braced as if it could explode in his hands at any moment. He carefully pressed the business end against the wall, and when he pulled away the gizmo left a trail of dull metal chain.

Ricky made faint faint squealing noises from the back of his throat but he didn't jump for joy. Instead he strained against his own excitement as he slowly dragged his device sideways and over the crack, moving as if he pulled against a heavy but delicate weight. He repeated the process on the other car, and when he pulled away the chain dangled freely between its two anchor points.

Now, Ricky could celebrate. "YES!" His shout shattered the tense silence and sent the others tumbling for cover a second time. "It worked! My gizmo works!"

Salazar's eyes swiveled around, double checking that everyone else was just as confused. "...And? We could've just tied off the tow cable, like it was made to do. Do you trash villagers have to over-complicate everything?"

"No wait, he's got something here," Phanya mused. She leaned in to study the chain; the very last link disappeared halfway into the jitney's body panel, merging into one piece of metal without any seams or welding. She rattled the chain, and the anchor points didn't budge. "Definitely better than just knotting up towing cable by hand."

Salazar stepped up next to her and one of his goggles telescoped slightly for a more detailed view. "Hrm, fine. So his portable printer has atomic binding, I guess," he grumbled. The concession looked like it caused Salazar physical discomfort, and Phanya basked in it since Ricky was too busy. The latter had stepped aside to let everyone be amazed, and kept working on the other side of the vehicles.

Ricky never stopped grinning from ear to ear. His invention really worked, he was really matching expensive corporate sciences with his own homegrown magic. Each time he pulled the trigger to cast Chain on the wall he felt a small pop of magical feedback. It felt like popping his knuckles, only on a conceptual level somehow. Or was he feeling it in the aether? The system messages said something about threads, but the pleasant sensations were just another exciting mystery for Ricky to uncover.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

And the sound! The clockwork's rapid ticking made excellent white noise for Ricky and drowned out the other voices, allowing him to sink even deeper into his concentration. He didn't know or care whether the system was influencing his emotions here, Ricky could listen to clockwork all day.

The tension building up in the back of his mind drained away; in this moment, Ricky knew he had chosen the best possible class combo.

"Wait, is this copper? Why in the hell would you make the chain out of copper?" Salazar suddenly asked.

The question broke through Ricky's concentration, he flinched just the wrong way, and one of the gears slipped. In an instant the precise timing that allowed Ricky to channel and shape his spell flew out of alignment, cascading throughout the entire gizmo before before Ricky could say, "Whoop—"

Gears suddenly realized that they were breaking the laws of physics and tried to vacate the impossible space, falling as separate pieces in all directions at once. The mainspring still held some magical energy in its coil, and released all of it with an unnaturally loud sproing sound as it ricocheted around the cabin. Ricky never let go of the trigger, but everything else scattered in a heap of parts.

[Spell component Chain has fizzled!]

"—sie," Ricky finished. "Aw skrat, guess that's what fizzling feels like." He dropped to all fours and started collecting his gears, sighing with relief when he realized that the gizmo breaking did not seem to damage any of the individual components. And at least this didn't hurt him, unlike the feedback Tapper said he felt when a spell fizzles.

Right on cue, Tapper reached down to hand Ricky a tiny gear. "What an excellent display, Ricky! I wish I had breath to take away." Tapper's eyebrows wiggled at his own joke before he quietly asked, "But why did you choose copper as the material result of your gizmo?"

Ricky hummed slightly, turning the proffered gear over in his fingers. "I didn't choose copper, that just seems to be the best I can do right now. There's an element of randomness that we're working with here, like don't you notice that sometimes your spells are sometimes stronger or weaker than normal?" Tapper nodded and Ricky continued, "Same thing here. This gizmo exists to hold the Chain spell, but if the spell just barely works then it doesn't make a physical chain at all. It just makes a conceptual chain that'll vanish the instant the spell ends, that was the glowing light back on the Privateer. Pure energy. I guess copper is what happens when the spell is just barely good enough to make a physical chain."

He sighed, suddenly feeling very drained. Now that the excitement of his success had passed, Ricky could only focus on how far he still had to go. Not like he would have time to tweak his contraptions in the heat of battle. "Just need better tools. The gremlin's rib carries all the magic and the gears are mathematically perfect, but it's not good enough. Oh yeah, and these skills are so dang weird. Did I tell you that I have Clockmaker as a whole background?"

Tapper imitated a gasping noise. "You did not! So it isn't a supplemental skill, you have two backgrounds now? That's amazing!"

"Yep!" Tapper's enthusiasm was infectious, and Ricky grinned despite his failures. "I picked the Artificer as my secondary class, and it came with the Clockmaker background to actually build the artifacts. My full class is now the Clockwork Knight! But the skills have their own quirks, like my Blacksmithing didn't like that I made my breastplate with the laser cutter." He reached up and knocked on his new armor for emphasis. "I had to kinda damage and then repair it by hand to make it a 'real' piece of armor. The same laser cut all these gears and Clockmaker doesn't care, but I still had to assemble it by myself or it wouldn't work. So weird."

"Hey Rickster," Phanya said, nudging him with her foot. She double-checked that Salazar was busy fiddling with his computer before she continued, "That was some really cool magic. Way better than my first try with the stuff. But can we please actually move now?"

"Hrm?" Ricky looked up and around. He had managed to crisscross the Chain spell around a majority of the vehicle's interior, and he shrugged at her. "I guess so, yeah. At least until I fix my gizmo. Thankfully I think I can rebuild it no problem, after the Chain spell word recharges. Tapper, didn't you say that happens after a night's rest?"

"Hey Sal!" Phanya said, loud enough to ensure that she drowned out Ricky's musings. "Didja hear that? Let's head out!"

"Yeah yeah, I'm still syncing up with the coordinates I got from the Privateer. You're all welcome for that, by the way," Salazar said, dismissively waving his hand over his shoulder.

"What's there to coordinate? We just need to follow the train tracks west to Neudopolis, so let's get going."

Salazar spun around in his computer chair, and even through his goggles Phanya could feel his glare. "No we don't. We need to go southwest now, because we shifted." The trio all stared at him, and Salazar groaned. "Gods, do you kids know anything? We drove into a shift storm, and then we drove out somewhere else. That's what happens when you fuck with the phase shift. Why do you think hunters like the Privateer hunt down phase events from the outside? Because only a complete psychopath would willingly enter the phase shift and risk getting warped somewhere else on the tarmac!"

A beat of silence as the reality slowly sank in. "We… did not know that, Mister Salazar," Tapper eventually said.

The seasoned mercenary looked at the three novice adventurers and slumped down slightly. Either because he realized just how out of their depth they were, or because he just didn't enjoy their building panic, Salazar reeled back the attitude just a little bit. "It could've been a whole lot worse, at least we're still in the same time zone. But yes, we're about a hundred klicks north of your little Fableton."

Phanya took several calming breaths with her hands clasped behind her head. An extra hundred kilometers added to their trip, that was expected to only take a few days, and they had already wasted a day. Nothing to do except do it. And light a few fires to get everyone moving.

"You!" she suddenly snapped, pointing a finger at Ricky. He was starting to rebuild his gizmo, and the gears all went flying again. "Forget the trinket, you're driving. You!" The finger swiveled to Salazar, who recoiled as if she had slapped him. "You're copilot, tell him where to drive. You!" The finger leveled on Tapper, but he did not flinch under its power. His eyebrows just wiggled, happy anytime he's involved with group instructions. "You're watching him, do NOT let our 'compatriot' touch the steering wheel. We're driving straight to Neudopolis, and we are not stopping unless we absolutely have to. Everything else we do in shifts."

Tapper's arm snapped up in a crisp salute. "Aye-aye, Phanya! What will your duty be?"

"As for me…" Phanya looked down the long interior of the conjoined car. The cot looked like it hadn't been properly cleaned in far too long, but it also looked like the first bed she had seen in a lifetime. "I'm taking the first sleeping shift."

Salazar followed her gaze and sputtered. "The fuck? That's my bed!" Phanya snapped back around, and this time her withering glare really did carry the energy of a teacher at the very end of her rope. He instantly backed down and put up his hands. "Fine sure, whatever. Take my bed, like everything else."

He was still muttering about everything and everyone around him when Phanya finally managed to fall asleep.